Famous Last Words
by Grimm Sister
Summary: In war, deaths are often sudden and leave no time for words of wisdom. Luckily, there are those whose final words remain with us, and they speak for more those that spoke them. A series of drabbles pairing famous last words to canon characters' deaths.
1. Prologue: Dudley's Poster

**Prologue**

**Dudley's Poster**

Ginny had been the one to insist that he come. In fact, she was pretty much blackmailing him to be here. Her delivery of the blackmail message had been fairly entertaining, actually, as it had been done in front of her family and the…favor…she threatened to withhold was one that her rather large brothers would not have appreciated knowing that she gave him under any circumstances.

But the amusement wasn't as strong here and now, approaching the university where Dudley Dursley had decided to study once the War ended. It was a dreadful, dreary rainy day, so after their ill-planned meeting in a park, both boys hurried in complete silence into the flat Dudley shared with three other students. One of them, Harry noticed, was a rather pretty girl who smiled warmly at Dudley as he entered with Harry.

What they had to talk about was too strange and foreign to be discussed in the common areas, so they scurried to Dudley's room. On the way, Harry discovered that Dudley's parents had settled in an outlying suburb to stay close to their baby boy but far from Surrey and that Dudley was on a course of Sports Management and taking an elective class in, of all things, creative writing. Apparently he was doing rather well with a short story about a boy who finds out he's a wizard. Harry decided not to be worried about this.

The small talk that staved off the awkwardness was mostly about Dudley, because the small talk about Harry that Dudley would find discernible was severely limited. They had to come around to it, eventually, to hold off the moment when silence would descend on them. They had never really learned how to talk to each other in the long years they had lived in the same house.

"So, you got a girlfriend?" Dudley finally asked.

"Yes," Harry replied simply.

"Serious?"

"Yes," Harry agreed again, in the same tone. He wished he could add more, but he was rather afraid he would blurt out, "She's the reason I'm here after all. If she can make me do this, I must be quite serious about her."

"Met her family yet?" Dudley asked, obviously also hoping to prolong the small talk portion of this meeting, especially as the fact that it was raining meant that Harry was likely stranded here for a long while.

"Met them first," Harry shrugged. "It's Ron's sister." A second later, Harry wondered if he had ever mentioned the name Ronald Weasley to Dudley Dursley.

Apparently his cousin had picked up on it, because he gave a low whistle. "I suppose you'd better be serious about her then, eh?" Dudley replied in a jocular tone that sounded foreign and unspeakably _wrong_ when directed at Harry. "Or those brothers of hers will make you sorry."

Harry blinked, suddenly remembering when the Weasleys had descended on Privet Drive to pick him up for the World Cup. Dudley smiled slightly, laughing off what he imagined was a slight embarrassment as Harry remembered that he had met the Weasleys in a rather dramatic scene and had reason to be afraid of Ginny's brothers.

Harry, however, was not struck with embarrassment at having forgotten such an event, amused at the rather funny scene that had emerged, or even thrown by a reference to the time before they had been able to say anything at all polite to each other. He was thinking of how long ago it seemed that Fred had pretended to drop the sweets that he and George had developed – Ton-Tongue Toffees – and how Dudley had been their first unwilling test subject. Harry, like most people, had never noticed how much Fred took the lead until after he had gone.

As Dudley smiled at him and wiggled his tongue a little as if to reassure himself that it was still the same size, Harry was struck by the sudden knowledge that Dudley had no idea that Fred Weasley had been killed. That was what really stood between Harry and his cousin now. Their amiable parting had done a great deal to break down the walls of abuse and neglect. The bigger problem was that Dudley, even after being in hiding for a year, had no notion what Harry had been through or what his freedom, along with the rest of the world's, had cost. For all of their lives, something had stood between them: his parents' blatant abuse and adoration, Harry's freakish magical ability, and now all of the War that Harry had seen.

Harry couldn't bring himself to help make more small talk or discuss some of the events of the past. The most he could bring himself to do was glance around Dudley's room, in the hopes of finding something he could safely comment on.

Dudley gave him a short moment to recover himself before blazing courageously onward. "So, are you going to Uni?"

"No, I've got a job," Harry said dully, not even bothering to look at his cousin.

"Really? What sort of work?"

"In the government," Harry muttered.

"Got you running errands and getting coffee?" Dudley laughed.

Harry blinked, but it was not from surprise at his cousin's ignorance of his fame and importance to the wizarding world. "We're restructuring at the moment," Harry managed to reply, staring at the poster that Dudley had hung on his wall.

"Just hoping your head's not on the chopping block then, eh?"

Harry shuddered. If Dudley knew, if he had any idea what Harry had been through, if he had ever endured anything like it, he would not have been able to talk that way. He certainly would never have purchased a poster whose title read, "Famous Last Words" and included, in much small script below this, a long list of the last words of famous men.

Dudley Dursley would not have been able to laugh at Edmund Gwenn, "Yes, it's tough, but not as tough as doing comedy," or Oscar Wilde's, "Either the wallpaper goes or I do." He would not find inspiration from Nathan Hale's proud declaration, "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country." Harry knew too many who had died with no chance to spout pretty words to grace future generations.

Worse still, he could see, in so many of the quotes, the face of someone he knew, someone who had been lost. There were phrases, famous last words, that could have been theirs. Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, Albus Dumbledore, Colin Creevy, Severus Snape…

Harry would not be able to sleep in a room with a poster that called up such ghosts. Harry turned to look at Dudley, who was watching him nervously and curiously, wondering what he was upset about. Dudley was fine here. He had chosen this poster to decorate his room because he still thought death could be heroic and imagined that it could be made to sound pretty. Harry smiled slightly to find himself thinking, for the first time since he was eleven years old, that Dudley might well have been the lucky one.


	2. Edmund Gwenn for Fred Weasley

**"Yes, it's tough, but not as tough as doing comedy"**

**- Edmund Gwenn, actor**

Fred had actually been thinking about the end of the Battle – the end of the War. In a way he hadn't for a very long time, he saw the future unfolding before him the first time that Percy Weasley cracked a joke in living memory.

He could see him and George taking Percy under their wing and bringing him along – a more promising pupil than either of them would have dreamed before tonight. They could laugh and forgive each other: as if Percy hadn't left and the twins hadn't excluded him.

So, of course, according to the strict rules of irony, that moment when Fred could see the future spreading before him again is the moment that it is ripped away.

George and Perce will have to manage on their own now. They've got the harder lot, to find humour in this whole mess. It was quite easy to find death.


	3. Oscar Wilde for Ted Tonks

**"Either the wall paper goes, or I do."**

**- Oscar Wilde, ironic playwright**

It had been the first argument of their marriage and promised to be the last: the great green velvet curtains in the drawing room. Ted hated them. Andromeda refused to part with them. He yielded, because her uncle had given them to her, however ugly, but he told her in later years that the first thing he would do when she died was take them down and burn them.

In all their years together, she had never screamed at him the way she did when he told her he was going into hiding alone. Stay for Nymphadora, she needs you now. She's pregnant, her husband has left…your family needs you. Andromeda wants to scream at him because he is her family, and she's already left everything for him. Her family needed her just as much then as it did now, and she had left it for him. Now another family has sprung up to part them, and this time he won't even ask her to leave it. This time he could not see that she wanted only to go with him. She had needed his help to admit it the first time, and he would not give it the second.

"Do reconsider those dreadful curtains," he said jovially, putting on his mask as he walked out the door. His parting line for lesser absences, as if he is just going around the corner and will return a moment later with ice cream for three.

She tells Teddy in later years that these were his last words. Eventually he realizes this must be a lie, but Andromeda's fury is too great that she never knew what his last words were.

When her daughter hears the news, she rushes home to find her mother struggling in a sea of green velvet, hacking with a kitchen knife at the drawing room curtains. She knows that her mother has already heard.


	4. Enkidu for Severus Snape

"My friend, the great goddess cursed me and I must die in shame. I shall not die like a man fallen in battle: I feared to fall, but happy is the man who falls in battle, for I must die in shame."

Enkidu, _Epic of Gilgamesh_, the sacrifice to save the hero

"You've chosen your way and I've chosen mine." It was what I hated most about Gryffindors, and the only thing I could ever bring myself to truly hate about her. Always the choice with them – as if anyone really made a free choice in a vacuum, as if those who grew up with Voldemort's doctrine really made a _choice_ any more than those who grew up with Muggle-loving sentimentality ingrained into them.

"If you loved Lily Evans, if you truly loved her, then your way forward is clear." I offered you anything, and you took it but didn't deliver your side of the bargain. Now you need a new stratagem to lead me by the hand. You say it's a choice I've already made. It is, but it isn't a choice that I would have made. Choice indeed. Do you, like her, think it so free? Even now, when you have tricked me into my "choice"?

"I am not such a coward." I heard my voice, and for the first time it a choice. I heard myself making it in surprise. "You are a braver man by far than Igor Karkaroff. You know, I sometimes think we Sort too soon…" Is that what I've become? A foolhardy, principled Gryffindor after all? How annoying.

But at least I didn't die heroically in Battle like her precious husband. Perhaps that is the other half of Lily's curse – to make me half a Gryffindor and deny me the glorious death that is the right of that house.  
"It cannot be any other way. I must master the wand, Severus. Master the wand, and I master Potter at last." A death that wasn't even about me, but about her brat, as if the rest of my life hadn't been enough. Even my death had to be all about her brat. Not even a brave last stand I had half come to desire. At least I wasn't such a Gryffindor in the end. Curse her for making this lot mine, and for making me want another. But that is the way of vindicitive goddesses, if the Greeks got anything right.


	5. Robert Alton Harris for Colin Creevey

"You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everyone dances with the Grim Reaper."

- Robert Alton Harris, executed in California

A book would be published with all of his photographs, his own descriptions and the commentary he scrawled on the backs reproduced below them (the later photographs edited by his brother Dennis).

Many purchased it, found it a fascinating portrayal of Hogwarts through a Muggleborn's eyes. They said that the book revolutionized the perspective of a new wizarding generation on Muggles and the Muggleborn.

The book became a guide to Hogwarts, required reading for every new student. Colin Creevy became one of the famous names he had courted so avidly.

Those who had known Colin were always disappointed, because while the book – officially a photojournal – was a fabulous portrait of his life and the world they knew threw his eyes…not one picture was of Colin.

So proud, he was, of all the famous faces he snapped, all the characters around him he captured. How special he must have felt when among the great and good and terrible on that field at the Battle of Hogwarts, the Grim Reaper was looking for him. Little Colin Creevy was the man to meet. Poor Colin never did get a shot with him.


	6. James Buchanan for Rufus Scrimgeour

"Whatever the result may be, I shall carry to my grave the consciousness that at least I meant well for my country."

James Buchanan

Not everyone was as clever and reasonable as you, Dumbledore. Not everyone was as brave as you, Potter. Sometimes people needed to be…placated. They need a gesture of reassurance. It was worth one fool in Azkaban to give them that.

The Ministry had resources, and I'm not an idiot. I knew whom to trust, and I would not have spread your secrets like wildfire. The Ministry could have helped you, smoothed your way.

Or at least, that was what I thought. The Ministry fell, my most trusted lieutenant led in the Death Eaters to take me, and public complacency, trust in the Ministry, fed right into their hands.

But I am brave and I am clever. I may have caused more trouble than I was worth for Potter and Dumbledore, but it was only meant to help. And Potter is just a boy. I would have made him a poster boy, a position I know is far less dangerous than the role Dumbledore has assigned him.

I meant well. To the very end, I struggled to prove that. I meant you well and will not let you come to harm.

Of course, it's not like I could have told them anyway, because of course you knew better than to trust me.

You both knew that the road to hell was paved with good intentions. Welcome to the end, gentlemen, that all of my good intentions could not prevent.


	7. George Gipp for Oliver Wood

"Win one for the Gipper!"

- George Gipp, football coach

For a Keeper, he could duck and dive with the best of them. And he could sure whip those old Quidditch players into shape above the Battle of Hogwarts.

He wasn't the ideal person to lead the aerial strike, however, because as a Keeper he was used to diving _towards_ oncoming objects rather than avoiding them.

"OLIVER!" Alicia Spinnet screamed into the night, barely managing to dodge a blast of a spell as she saw her former captain fall from his broom into the sea of Death Eaters below them.

"Watch those bloody Bludgers, Spinnet!" he shouts as he falls, and it almost could have been one of his torturous Quidditch practices years ago. Except that he never would have fallen off his broom from any mere Bludger.

Alicia turns, notices how the others too have paused. "ATTACK!" she screams into the night, redoubling the force of her blows, calling out formations and plays into the night as she melds her mind to that of Katie and Angelina again. They all redouble their fury, because they know the greatest insult to Oliver Wood would be to let him die in a loss.


	8. Lord Farquad for Dolores Umbridge

"I will have order! I will have perfection! I will –"

- Lord Farquad, _Shrek_

She was able to insult no one's intelligence by insisting that she had been placed under the Imperius Curse. Everyone knew she would have been far less use to the Death Eaters if she needed instructions for how to be awful rather than simply let loose with her own nastiness.

She was able to insult no one's intelligence by claiming to have simply served the Ministry zealously but ignorantly. Everyone knew no one could have gotten to the Minister without going through her first.

Still, it would have been a thoroughly annoying time for all of them and people like Harry Potter would have been beside themselves throughout the charade. And who even knew with her? She was nothing if not brilliant at bending the Ministry and its institutions – including the Wizengamot – to her will.

So it was just so much easier when, while most decided to leave it to McGonagall to detain her, Mary MacDonald Cattermole took her out from behind. Like the Senior Undersecretary had struck so many in her career.

It had been just too funny watching her momentarily waver – unsure of her allegiances for perhaps the first time in her life. After all, it had never mattered which Order she served before.

She was able to surprise no one by beginning her self-righteous speech for whatever side she was about to choose – because, really, she should have known by then that no one cared what she demanded of the world.


	9. Charles Foster Kane for Sirius Black

"Rosebud."

- _Citizen Kane_, Orson Welles

The room could have belonged to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. His father would have loved it. His mother would have loved to redecorate it. He could almost hear them hissing through the curtain – veil, whatever – even more sinister than anything they could have picked out.

He could never escape them. He always knew he would end up back at Grimmauld Place at the end of this life. He always knew he would die in a place they would adore. He always knew he would spend most of his life reliving theirs – Azkaban was only the literal version of that inevitable fate.

He pretended he didn't believe that, but even at the height of his rebellion he discovered his Animagus form: the black dog of his family crest.

And now he's playing with his cousin again. He always knew he would die because of Bellatrix. Once he thought it would be because she led him down some crazy path or some prank or plot gone wrong. When he left, he knew she would make sure she was the death of him.

They had both ended up in the same place despite their vastly different paths. Twice.

He's actually pleased it was a taunt at her that brought his life to a close. It didn't complete his life, it didn't sum everything up. He had a whole row of comedy and tragedy for that. All he needed was the opposite bookend.

And that could only be Bellatrix Black.


	10. General Zaroff for Bellatrix Lestrange

"I see. Splendid! One of us is to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent bed. On guard, Rainsford."

- General Zaroff, a manhunter (literally)

Character features in "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell

Dueling was always fun for Bellatrix Lestrange. Even when she was tiny. Even when she was too young to be any good at it, really. Even when she was facing a more experienced opponent.

Even when she was the last opponent facing down a cascade of rabble coming for her Master. Yes, even then, Bellatrix was having the time of her life dancing through the deadly spells exchanged between her and the three girls weaving around her – ultimately pointlessly. This was one joy even Azkaban had left pure. Let's play – you versus me. Only the tricks I can play and the strategy you can devise and the tools we've built with our hands and wands for just this moment.

And ah! The bated mama bear! One of her favourites!

A Prewett too. Bellatrix remembered her brothers, silly little brats, really, but brave. She hadn't expected quite that level of opening viciousness from their sister, but all the better. The final game for one ancient house, played out by the daughters as Bellatrix always knew should have been the case.

You or me, Molly – can I call you Molly? Since we're having such fun. Let's see who can play mind games better, who can keep a cool head, who can summon the power and adrenaline after this long night to fight for Master or child, who can bewitch the other – as we have bewitched the entire Great Hall of Hogwarts.

On guard, Molly. Let's dance, Prewett. You're good, I've never met my match before. I love the stakes, I love the style, I love the setting, I love the flair, I love the unexpectedness of the attack. This was always my favourite game! To the death!


	11. Stephen Decatur for Remus Lupin

"I am mortally wounded . . . I think"

Stephen Decatur, American commodore, died in a duel

The first time Remus Lupin thought he died was when he was very young. He was very nearly right. What other end could an attack by a gigantic mad wolf have? If only he could have imagined…

When Remus Lupin woke up with memories of the trapdoor open and human faces down below, he thought his life was over. It very nearly was. What other end could an attack by a gigantic mad wolf have? If only he could stop imagining…

The first time Remus Lupin wished he was dead was when he realized his friends no longer trusted him. He didn't think it could be any worse – nothing else could take away so much of his life – surely they knew he couldn't have controlled himself in his full moon form, but suddenly they blamed him – for the first time – for his condition.

But what other end could an attack by a gigantic mad wolf have? If only they could have imagined as they did once…

Remus thought his life was over when they died. He thought he would take his wife with him into the land of the dead. What other end could a marriage to a gigantic mad wolf have? If only he could have imagined how she could love him…

When darling Dora fell to her cousin's wand, Remus flew into such a rage he knew that many deaths were about to rush upon those around him. Perhaps, if he was inordinately lucky, this one would stick for him as well. What other end could an attack by a gigantic mad wolf have? If only he could have imagined what lay beyond…


	12. Peter Pan for Nymphadora Tonks Lupin

"To die will be an awfully big adventure."

- Peter Pan

Created by J.M. Barrie

Her final evaluation for Auror training had been a high pass, a first in half her subjects and nothing below at two-two in everything but stealth movement. But then in the comments had been the kicker, what made her appointment a near thing: Tonks, you need to grow up and get your head on straight or you'll never get off the beginner beats. As if she were a liability because she cracked jokes on patrols and liked to get cute with her metamorphmagi powers. Gee, thanks, Mad-Eye. _And, of course, it's not like my "silliness" wasn't how I sprung your clever little trap on the exams…_

That's what they all told her when she collapsed about Remus. Oh, it's not what they _said_, but it's what they meant. Pull yourself together and get over him. Grow up and stop thinking that the universe begins and ends on this _guy_. Like she was just some silly teenager with a crush. Thanks oh so much for your help, Molly. _It's not like any woman's ever gone "pathetic" over the love of her life before, is it? Not like half of women aren't reduced to worse by the men who love them…_

Of course, Remus was even worse. How much love, how much devotion could she pour in his lap before he got the picture? Before he realized that she genuinely _did not care_ that he was older and tortured and all the things he made himself and, oh yes, a werewolf. How many times could she explain that it was _not a deal breaker_ before she exploded or he got it through his so-thick-she-believed-it-was-half-wolf head? And he'd just smile condescendingly at her or snap sarcastically: grow up. Of course it matters. As if she was some silly child who didn't get what it really meant. Why thank you, dear, how ever so sweet of you to worry about me._ It's not like I'm an Auror who fights Dark creatures on a daily basis, clearly I can't be trusted to tell the good from the bad, it's not my job to fight dangerous battles every day, clearly I couldn't handle myself with a potion-tamed werewolf…_

And her mother, when she cried that she just wanted her husband back, when she welcomed him home with anger but understanding. Such a child, to forgive the man who ran out on you, such a baby to say you forgive him, such a pregnant hormone-crazed _girl_ to trust him again. But she did understand why he had done it, and she why was it so immature to forgive him for being stupid? For letting his own hang ups lead him so far away from the truth he couldn't even see it?

Tonks was shining with bravery in the light of the truth, just like children always do.

Such a child, who went tearing off into the night after her protector. _Please._

If there was anything immature about her behavior that night, it was that she didn't want Remus to be the one to get Bellatrix Lestrange. She wanted to handle that herself. And goodness knows Remus would target her stupidly, to protect his childlike wife. Ha! She would _not_ sit quietly at home and let them think her a baby – no better than Ginny whom they coddled so ridiculously! She was Mad-Eye's apprentice, she was a werewolf's bride, she was Ted Tonks' daughter, she was Sirius Black's cousin, and she was born for this.

And yes, she was ready to die for this. _Sounds like a good way to go._

Perhaps she was a bit too much of a kid after all.


	13. Georg Wilhelm Hegel for Grindelwald

"Only one man ever understood me. And he really didn't understand me."

- Georg Wilhelm Hegel, one of the creators of German idealism

No, I have not repented. You have to be wrong to do that.

Surely, if he believed or even opened himself up to that possibility, Albus had never really known me. Pity. Then again, if Albus had really known me, he never would have let himself get that close. Towards the end, he might have fallen, but if he had known from the beginning that brat Ariana would still be alive and my movement would have taken much longer to grow into being.

But when Dumbledore heard – wherever he was – that old Gellert had died rather than admit even that I once had the wand the newest madman dancing with darling Albus wanted, he might just consider: perhaps Gellert wants to make some amends for his wrongs.

Bullocks. I didn't hurt anyone who didn't deserve it. I almost convinced him of that once.

No, if Albus thought that, he never really knew me at all.

But let him believe – I do know Albus, and he'll need that.

He really never knew me at all: he thought I didn't really love him.


	14. Giles Corey for Emmeline Vance

"More weight."

Giles Corey, crushed to death for circumventing his Salem witch trial with a technicality

_The Crucible _by Arthur Miller

Emmeline Vance was surprised and actually rather flattered that she rated a personal appearance by the Dark Lord. Just as she was delighting that she could still kick the crap out of trash like Lucius Malfoy – Merlin knew she'd been waiting to wipe the smirk of his face for decades – she was whomped back into the wall.

As the dividing wall fell in around her, causing the Dark Lord's escorts to execute the neighboring family as they gawped, Emmeline felt the crush of far more pressure than the plaster and bricks alone could have caused. As she sputtered up blood and fought for the bits of air buried under the red filling her lungs, she looked up into the face of Tom Riddle himself.

"So," she coughed, clearing her throat, swallowing bile and blood, to master her normal politician voice. "You want Scrimgeour leading the third side of your war. He's not half so nice as Fudge to aim at Dumbledore but…for the record, I wouldn't have been as tight an ally as he would have wanted either." The Dark Lord merely looked coldly down at her. No sparks erupted from his wand, but the floor nearly buckled with the added weight of more magic on the pile of bricks stabbing through her body.

After an unavoidable grunt, Emmeline spit the excess blood out of her mouth onto his robes. "Ironic, wouldn't it have been, if your great accomplishment in the scheme of things was to get a Muggleborn elected Minister for Magic."

Emmeline Vance laughed until she choked on it. "Better finish the job. If the Aurors arrive and I survive this, it'll lock the election for sure."

In the end, she fell dead through the floor to the apartment below.


	15. Catherine Barkley for Lily Evans

"Don't worry, darling. I'm not a bit afraid. It's just a dirty trick."

Catherine "Cat" Barkley,

_A Farewell to Arms_ by Ernest Hemingway

The first time we faced Voldemort, I thought I would die side by side with James Potter. And all I could think was that if you had told me how proud it would make me to do so even just a year earlier…

The second time we defied the Dark Lord, the only thing I could think was: "I'm going to die on my back because that oaf I married tried to push me out of the way like a moron - I'm going to kill him."

The third time I wasn't thinking. I launched myself forward in truly idiot fashion, determined that _he_ would-not-get-my-baby. Not without a fight.

Perhaps it's because I had so much practice that I was able to do it. Die not by James' side but follow close on his heels all the same; die on my feet even as I dove into the path of a curse; die knowing it would do my baby no good in the end - that I would meet him again on the other side soon. Perhaps that was why I was able to die, smiling at my son, to convince my baby that it was all not real.

Perhaps, because I had not died, three times before, that's why I was able to pull it off so convincingly. Why I was able to coo love and comfort, because I had already done panic and defiance and reminiscence. Why I was able to move so quickly - because I knew the steps. Why I could accept it with a smiling, if feigned, nonchalance - because my life flashing before my eyes had been interrupted and my famous last words were cut short and I survived my brave last stand. Because I had faced death and Voldemort and the fear was over - because I had covered every other thought. So I could find strength and love, and imagine power over death and Dark Lord.

So I could smile at my baby, thinking only of him. Don't worry, darling. I'm not a bit afraid. It's just a dirty trick.


	16. Damon Runyon for Dobby, A Free Elf

"You can keep the things of bronze and stone and give me one man to remember me just once a year."

Damon Runyon

When Dobby first came to Malfoy Manor as part of Narcissa Black's dowry, he had been heartbroken to see that the Malfoys, unlike the Blacks, did not honor the house elves who had died in their service by mounting their heads on the walls. In time, he was to learn that the other Noble Houses thought the Blacks more than a little morbid for the bizarre practice.

The Blacks treated their servants like scum, but they tolerated their desire to be remembered, at least amongst themselves.

The Malfoy's elves, however, passed their days in dank obscurity and died without a trace. Sometimes Dobby would wonder if his cruel masters would even notice he had at long last dropped dead at their feet or how long he would lay on the floor of a seldom used room until the next house elf arrived to dispose of his body.

Perhaps it was the mounted heads to which he had aspired in his young life that made him want to do something worthwhile before he disappeared as if he had never been. Perhaps it was a simple rebellion against those who would use him and not even forget him – you cannot forget what you have never acknowledged. Perhaps that was what made him seek out Harry Potter. He had only thought to warn him. He had not meant to find something better.

Every time Harry Potter remembered his name – even when he remembered it as the crazy elf who kept nearly getting him killed – Dobby felt his heart swell and his courage mount.

When Harry Potter called him his friend, when he wore the socks Dobby had knitted for him, when he called on Dobby in his times of distress…Dobby could only think with scorn of those mounted heads with names written in a vain delusion that the elves were not just as forgotten as if, like the Malfoys, the Blacks forbid the elves from memorializing their own.

He would not have cared about a headstone, even one proudly proclaiming him free. Harry Potter, he knew, would remember his name when he had gone. What was a mounted head on a wall compared to that?


End file.
